Now that we have our SQL Server instance setup, we need to configure it for remote connections. Microsoft disables remote connections out of the box for security purposes. They don’t want people connecting to servers that were not intended to be available remotely.
In our previous post, I displayed a network map showing that my server is not connected to the internet in anyway. In a local network scenario, you don’t have to worry about ports as much since typically your firewall is turned off between computers.
I used these articles to learn how to connect to a SQL Server instance:
http://www.linglom.com/2009/03/28/enable-remote-connection-on-sql-server-2008-express/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlexpress/archive/2005/05/05/415084.aspx
Here’s a Microsoft article on the topic of enabling tcpip:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb909712(v=vs.90).aspx
If you do need to enable access through Windows Firewall, here’s an article on the topic:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175043.aspx
Honestly, most of my difficulty comes in from not entering computer name right – COMPUTER\INSTANCE or WIN-SC-SRV3\SQLEXPRESS. Inevitably I keep trying to enter \\WIN-SC-SRV3\SQLEXPRESS\ or something similar.
Our next post will deal with how to manage backups.
